**4.5. St. Lucia**

226 New Approaches to the Study of Marine Mammals

**4.2. Bermuda** 

(Romero and Creswell 2010 and references therein).

shore whaling began around 1663 in those waters.

humpbacks are virtually extinct in that area at the present time.

**4.4. St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG)** 

whalers and the locals (Romero 2009).

**4.3. Trinidad and Tobago** 

some Yankee whaling vessels were taken there after being captured by British vessels during the British-American War (1812-1815); others were simply abandoned there. This provided ample opportunity for Barbadians to have direct contact with whalers and to acquire whaling skills. For example, an unspecified number of locals joined Yankee whaling vessel crews in order to fulfill the need for hands on board because of death and desertion. Since Yankee whalers recruited many Barbadians, they gained the necessary skills to hunt whales they later applied to shore whaling after returning to Barbados. The combination of Yankee and shore whaling led to the local extinction of humpback whales in those waters

There are very few traces of intense contact between Bermudans and Yankee whalers. That was due to a combination of factors: (1) Bermuda was a stronghold of the British during the Revolutionary War, which made its waters off-limits to New Englanders; (2) during the British-American war of 1812, the English utilized Bermuda as a major base for their naval operations and any American vessel in those waters (whaler or otherwise) was captured and taken there; (3) during the American Civil War Bermudans who had historical ties with the South, particularly Virginia and the Carolinas, sided with the confederates, making of Bermudan waters hostile territory to Yankee whalers and (4) by the time of the heyday of Yankee whaling the local populations of humpbacks were already severely depleted since

Thus, despite the overall large number of Yankee whalers visiting Bermuda, it seems that those visits were more a matter of convenience for obtaining provisions for ships either heading to the Eastern Atlantic grounds or heading south to the Caribbean. My survey of archival material in Bermuda yielded no information about relationships between Yankee

Activities by Yankee whaling ships for Trinidad and Tobago have been summarized elsewhere (Romero et al. 2002). All indications are that there was never much interaction between Yankee and land-based whalers. Yankee whaling in the area did not start until the 1830s, when their Trinidadian counterparts were already fully engaged in whale hunting. If anything, Yankee whaling may have furthered the whale population decline since

Yankee whalers began whaling in the waters of SVG in the early 1800's and their activity peaked in 1864. They hunted humpback, sperm, and short-finned pilot whales (*Globicephala macrorhynchus*). Both pilot and humpback whales were chosen as target species because of the seemingly abundant populations and the products that can be This island was occasionally visited by Yankee whalers and sometimes was used as a base for their whaling. These vessels mostly pursued humpbacks, but occasionally took some short-finned pilot whales (Reeves, 1988). The last report of Yankee whaling for St. Lucia is dated 1883 (Reeves and Smith, 2002).
